


Rabid

by anemic_cinema



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Non-Graphic Violence, Physical Abuse, Psychological Trauma, Racial slurs, Racism, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 23:49:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1960878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anemic_cinema/pseuds/anemic_cinema
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Both Daryl and Merle are the result of the same disease.</p><p>CW:see tags. Read with caution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rabid

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics featured are from Nicole Dollanganger's song "Rabid." It's on her album "Flowers Of Flesh And Blood" and it's available on her bandcamp. If you like strange, kind of spooky, acoustic music, go and listen and give her dollars.

_“Something ugly in you, you also saw in me  
Guess we’re infected with the same disease”_

Daryl's first memory of Merle is of how big he looks standing over him. By the time he was born, Merle was living nowhere near their daddy. At the time, or at least if Daryl is remembering it correctly, mama was still around. Bruised, always with a can of beer in her hand, but still around. The smell of beer makes him think of her for the longest time. His memories are fuzzy, but he remembers certain things. A lot he's forgotten on purpose. But he remembers the tall boy standing over him with short curly hair and the voice that was permanently hoarse even then. 

Mama was there, but barely, and Merle was yelling at her. She'd been drifting in and out of sleep all day. She'd told Daryl that Mama was gonna go away now, and had swallowed some pills. Daryl runs from the yelling and into the tiny room that he's allowed to sleep in.

“You dumb cunt, you gotta be watchin' him. He's just a baby.”

Mama slurs something, and he hears the sound of a fist hitting an eye. He knows sounds like that like some kids know the sounds that barnyard animals make. After that, Merle comes around at least every other day. Daryl learns his name and gets excited when he hears him pull up in his truck. His brother ruffles his hair, calls him kiddo or little brother, and sometimes brings him Happy Meals. Daryl lines up the toys from the red and yellow boxes in his room, and when he's sad stares at them. They remind him that his brother cares.

His daddy doesn't like it much. Him and Merle get into it a lot. Daryl hides while they start to cuss at each other, Merle calling him a useless drunk motherfucker, and his daddy telling Merle to mind his own damn business, and does he think he can take him? Daryl gets the impression Merle gets mad because of how they live, and at how fast Daryl eats the food he brings him. Daryl tries to eat slow, but sometimes his stomach hurts so much from hunger he can't help himself. 

_“Well I could be your girl, and you could be my baby  
Have a habit of ruining everything”_

Mama's long gone, but some of her clothes are still tucked away in his daddy's closet. Daryl likes to pull them out. It's been months now, but he imagines they still smell like her. He puts on the faded pink t-shirt that used to be hers, and it's like she's holding him again. A smell that has to be her lingers on it, sour but comforting.

Merle sees him in it and laughs. “You look like a girl Daryl.”

Daryl throws his arms around his waist and hugs him. “I'm yer girl big brother.”

He's not sure why he said it, except he wants to be with his brother so bad, be somewhere far away from his daddy and his fists. Once Merle brought over a girlfriend for him to meet, and he was a little jealous of how he kept hugging her and giving her tons of attention even though he was supposed to be there to visit him. It made Daryl feel like he was starving, because no one hugs him like that. He doesn't realize how mad that makes his brother until he hits the floor and Merle is yelling at him. 

“Don't say shit like that! Goddamn it, you wanna grow up t'be a fag? Take that damn shirt off.”

Later on, Daryl takes all those clothes, bags them up, and throws them in the trash. He forgets his mama's sour smell, but that's alright by him.

_“You like to play with knives and get all cut up  
Had a shotgun and you sawed the barrel off”_

The first knife Merle gives him is on his twelfth birthday. Daddy's out getting drunk, so Merle comes over. His head's shaved now, and he looks meaner now that he's been in jail. Juvie didn't even make him look so hard. Daryl's eyes light up when his brother pulls the butterfly knife out of his pocket and gives it to him. 

“Didn't have time to wrap it. Happy birthday lil' brother.” 

Daryl cuts up his hands learning how to twirl it open and close. That night Merle takes him to his place on the back of his new motorcycle. He doesn't have a helmet, and he tells Daryl to hang on tight. The air hitting his face as they speed down the road feels good. It makes him giddy and like he's free and doesn't have to worry about anything ever. Like one day he'll be big and strong like Merle, and that one day he can forget everything that's happened to him.

The house where he's staying is even worse looking that the trailer. There's some people on the couch smoking white smoke from pipes, and when they exhale it they look like steam engines. Their faces look like Halloween masks, all rubbery and pockmarked. Merle shows him his new shotgun.

“Got it from my new friends here. Ain't it cool? I'll teach ya how to shoot it.”

There's a Confederate flag covering one of the windows in the living room, and a red flag with a crooked cross covering the other. The house scares Daryl, so does the gun, but he doesn't say anything. He doesn't want Merle to think he's a pussy.

_“Covered up in welts you say you like it rough  
Well no blood for you will ever be enough”_

The first time Daryl takes the bus all by himself is to go to the county prison to see his brother. He says he's sixteen, but really he's just shy of fourteen. The guards look at him with such pity and contempt it makes Daryl wish he had his knife so he could stick it in them for it. When Merle takes his seat on the other side of the glass he looks awful. He's bruised up and cut up but smiling.

“You should see the other guy. I done taught that nigger good though, you shoulda seen 'im lil' brother. When I got through with 'im, he looked like a goddamn raw piece of meat.”

The person seated next to them looks over in disgust. Daryl pretends no one else exists except him and his brother. He does that a lot. He just listens to his brother bragging about why he's in jail, and asking him to bring him cigarettes next time.

_“We’re the same, we’re both rabid animals  
Got sick heads and minds, we were both born feral”_

The woods are isolated, and Merle is making good on his promise to teach Daryl how to shoot his shotgun. Daryl isn't afraid anymore. It feels good to have it in his hands, and to see the buckshot make the bark fly off of the tree. It makes him feel in control.

“I think I'm gonna need to get you one of yer own for yer birthday or somethin'. Like that we can go huntin'.” Merle's been drinking, so he's happy. 

“I want a crossbow.” Daryl blurts it out without thinking, but it's something he's been wanting for a long time. He's seen hunters carrying out game from the woods, crossbows over their shoulders. In his mind, it's better than hunting with a gun. It's more fair. The animals have a chance, and he'd actually have to work to get them. He doesn't like the idea of hunting unless he has to earn the right to have the meat.

“A crossbow? Ok Robin Hood, I'll get ya a crossbow for yer birthday.” Merle tosses him a beer, and Daryl smells it before he swallows down the cool liquid. It reminds him of something safe. 

_“Like fields growing high,  
We’re just those dark animals”_

Merle gets locked up regularly now. He can't stop doing bad things, and he can't stop getting caught. Daryl can't not go visit him. He knows the bus route by heart now, and brings Merle cigarettes that he either steals or gets someone to buy for him. He's saving up for a fake ID to make it easier. When he can get the money, he brings his brother cash for his jail account. Merle smiles at him and that's thanks enough. 

When Daryl's left alone like that, with no one to turn to if his daddy gets into one of his fits, he just goes into the woods. He teaches himself how to track animals, how to set up snares and how to shoot game. Merle got him the crossbow like he said he would. Daryl would've preferred if he wasn't in jail for his birthday. He regrets asking for something so trivial instead of asking Merle to make sure he wasn't locked up when the day rolled around. One of Merle's friends with a shaved head and a crooked cross on his neck brings it to him. He hides it so his daddy won't pawn it. It's one of the few things that are his and his alone. 

Merle never apologizes for leaving him alone. Daryl never brings it up. He doesn't want to ruin the one thing that's good in his life.

_“The sad things at night  
We know no control”_

Daryl tries not to listen when his daddy starts to scream. He knows every word that he says by heart. “Worthless, no good, son of a bitch, goddamn faggot.” He just tunes them out and is out the door. The old man doesn't dare raise a hand to him anymore, not since Daryl turned the tables and fought back. He knocked his daddy to the ground, and saw him for what he was. A frail, booze-addled, graying man with a bad temper and a big mouth. Gone are the days when he'd whup him with switches or extension cords. He's left plenty of scars, but Daryl's big enough now to take him. To anyone who sees him on the street he looks like a mean, lean motherfucker. All defiance and pent-up rage, who could snap at anyone over anything.

That's good though. It means they don't notice how he doesn't like to look people in the eye, and how he hides his chewed up fingernails by curling them towards his palms. He spends a lot of his nights outdoors in the woods now. Merle said that once he was out of the halfway house they could get a place together. Daryl has a calendar, and marks off the days towards that goal. It's the only thing he can control, and the only thing he's living for.

But when it happens finally, and all his belongings are out of the trailer, it's not like Merle promised at all. Prison's made him meaner than Daryl remembered, and when he yells he sounds just like their daddy. Daryl doesn't say it to himself, but it scares the shit out of him. The minute he raises his voice, even if he's outside, or in another room, Daryl starts to cringe and wishes he had someplace to hide out from the sound. 

Merle is supposed to work at the bar downstairs as a bouncer. He makes more money slinging crystal. He'd make more if he didn't smoke so much of it. Daryl tries it once, and the way it makes his head feel like a balloon blown up too big is awful. It hurts his lungs, so he leaves it to his brother. Merle likes it, but when he smokes it it's like he becomes something far removed from the brother that Daryl remembers. The night when he smokes too much of it and puts his fist through the plaster of the wall because he's pissed that Daryl drank the last beer is the worst. He takes off in a fury, but comes back with McDonalds hours later as an apology.

“That shit's so good makes ya lose yer head.” He says with a crooked smile. “You want some fries?”

Daryl takes small bites of his burger, and tries not to think about how those words mean nothing or what Merle might have inherited from their daddy. 

_“You’re the darkest horse that I’ve ever seen  
Of all the things you fuck, I’m the most empty”_

Merle's been smoking that toxic white crystal smoke, and his breath smells like beer and chemicals. Any memories he had associating the smell of beer with his long gone mother get erased in one night, and replaced with an ungodly weight on top of him. The first punch hurts the worse, but they all hurt pretty bad. Daryl fights back some, but then he doesn't, and that fact makes it so he can't tell anyone. Not that this is something he could tell anyone. What was he supposed to do? Hurt his brother? Hurt the only person who's ever cared about him?

Anyway, he figures it's his fault. He must have provoked him into getting angry. It was talk about the rent and how much was owed from whom that started it, and Daryl knows he should've known better. He could have yelled for him to stop even though his mouth couldn't even manage a whimper of pain when his brother's fists landed. Merle was drunk, and high, and didn't know what he was doing so really it's no one's fault. Just one of those awful things that happen. Daryl knows all about that. Awful things happen all the time for no reason.

“You gonna give me what ya owe me now? Are ya gonna be my girl, little brother?” The smile that used to keep Daryl going when he felt hopeless now gets confused with something painful. His teeth make him think of animal bones and he bites down on the insides of his cheeks to keep from hollering.

His breath feels too hot on his neck, and Daryl stays as quiet and as still as he can, and lets him finish what he started. His hands are where they shouldn't be and they feel like sandpaper. There's pains in Daryl's ribs and face where his brother's fists landed, and they feel just like the ones his father inflicted on him. But this is worse, and it reminds Daryl that as low as he is, he can be driven lower.

After, once he's passed out, Daryl digs the jagged edges of his nails in the palms of his hands until it hurts more than what Merle just did to him. He closes himself into the tiny room Merle has given him, and doesn't sleep until the sun rises up and Merle leaves the apartment he rents over the bar. Once Daryl knows he's gone, he lets himself fall asleep. When he wakes up the only thing he can do is stay still, so still it's like being a rock or a tree. When he was little he'd do that, and it helped. It doesn't now. It just makes him feel the aching more. Not just his body, but that old dull starving ache for someone, anyone, to give a fuck about him.

Merle doesn't remember anything about what happened, or pretends not to. Daryl tries to do the same. He remembers everything though. He always does. It kinda makes him wish Merle had accidentally killed him or something. It would've taken only a little bit more pressure from his arm across his throat. He thinks about that more and more. Ideas and plans involving pills and knives start to take over his mind. 

_“And no blood for you will ever be enough  
Can’t bury anything without digging it up”_

Daryl tries it once. It doesn't work, and he refuses to go to the hospital. Merle helps him bandage up his wrists without saying anything. From the look in his eyes he knows exactly why this happened, and that's enough. After than Daryl doesn't think about it anymore. When the memories and the starving come back up, there's alcohol to help with the not thinking. He doesn't want to be weak, and he figures that trying again would be just that. So he just buries it deep, along with everything else. It's the only thing he knows how to do.


End file.
